Junot Diaz and Yunior: The Mirror of an Author Amanda Bush Course: Introduction to Literary Theory Professor: Rosa Soto Student: Amanda Bush Essay: Junot Diaz and Yunior: The Mirror of an Author
Assignment: For this assignment, students were asked to incorporate lessons learned about Feminism, Feminist Theory or Gender Studies (misogyny, Patriarchy,
privilege and “Male Gaze”) onto an examination of the novel Drown by Junot Diaz.
Many sources call the character of Yunior in the novel Drown a semi-biographical mirror of author Junot Diaz as their stories are not the same in exact detail, but Yunior’s experiences seem to reflect and follow a similar course of Diaz’s own experiences. This makes sense, as writers are often told to write about what they know. When considering the strong examples of Yunior’s misogynistic behavior and objectification of women though, one would hope that these behaviors do not mirror the beliefs and actions of Diaz. However, in 2019 a situation arose in which Junot Diaz was accused of not only sexual misconduct, but misogynistic and abusive behaviors as well. This paper will explore how Yunior’s misogynistic and patriarchal views allow us a glimpse into the mind of Junot Diaz and how he views the world around him.
this entire chapter, Yunior imparts to the reader his expectations of the behavior of women based on a variety of factors, a sort of “rule set” he lives by if you will. Some examples are these, “A local girl may have hips and a thick ass but she won’t be quick about letting you touch… A whitegirl might just give it up right then. Don’t stop her.” (147) or “Order everything in your busted-up Spanish. Let her correct you if she’s Latina and amaze her if she’s black.” (145) These are only two examples of ways in which Yunior sees these women through the lens of what Feminist theory calls the “male gaze”. This theory purports that often in media men are portrayed as the subject with women portrayed as the object, often as a sort of sexual object to fulfill the pleasures of the man or protagonist. This brings us into another important Feminist theory which we can use to analyze the behaviors of Yunior which is called “Objectification”. Objectification takes the male gaze one step further, describing the treatment and degradation of women into the status
First, let us discuss the most glaring account of misogyny we have seen in the novel thus far, which would be in the chapter titled “How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, or Halfie”. Throughout 5
